


How Still the Riddle Lies

by wendelah1



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Backstory, Community: halfamoon, Friendship, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is early season one. Dana Scully is newly assigned to the X-files division. As she struggles to understand her brilliant, erratic partner, Fox Mulder, and adjust to her new role as a field agent, she begins to have nightmares. They take place in a basement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Still the Riddle Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks go first to Emily Shore, for her extraordinarily detailed and insightful comments on my first draft. There is no way to put into words my feelings of love and admiration for my husband, whose encouragement of my writing and careful editing of this story made all the difference.

_Some things that fly there be--   
Birds-- Hours-- the Bumblebee--   
Of these no Elegy. _

Some things that stay there be--   
Grief-- Hills-- Eternity--   
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.   
Can I expound the skies?   
How still the Riddle lies!

-Emily Dickinson

1.

"Bill, Bill," she calls out. She is dreaming. This is how it always starts. She waits until her brother storms off, then tiptoes down the basement steps to where she has hidden the rabbit. Carefully, she opens up the little chamber of death. There it is, as always, the baby rabbit lying on its side, the white maggots crawling over the body, consuming the rotting flesh. She wakes up.

* * * *

"Mulder, I need to..." She almost said "examine you for trace evidence." But for what? She couldn't leave a paper trail of Mulder's unauthorized field trip in search of flying saucers. He really could lose his job. But she did want to make sure he wasn't seriously injured. Something had been done to him during his incarceration at the base, she mused, but what? She knew of no procedure or medical technology that made excising memory from a man's brain as uncomplicated as cleaning rotting vegetables from a refrigerator bin. She settled on, "I need to check your pupils." Mulder's eyes were such an unusual color, not quite gray, not brown either. Hazel, now I know what hazel looks like, she thought, as she took a small flashlight from her bag, dimmed the motel room light, and shone the penlight into first one and then the other eye. Normal. Although, his sclera did look a bit irritated and red.

"Do your eyes feel itchy or painful?"

"No, I just feel really tired. Can I go to sleep now?"

"Not yet. Take your shirt off. I want to check you for signs of trauma and for injection sites." After she switched the light back on, she turned back to him and had to stifle her gasp. Mulder had sat up to take off his tee-shirt and had turned to the side. Clearly visible on his right flank was a large hemetoma. She had forgot about the punch he had taken from the men in black. "This looks painful." As she reached out to palpate the bruised area, he flinched and pulled away, grabbing her wrist.

"It is, stop it. Jesus, Scully." She pulled her hand away from him.

"Fine. I'll look but not touch. Just get back on the bed." The look she gave him stopped further argument. This is what she disliked about live patients, they just wouldn't cooperate. She leaned over him, scanning his torso. He was slender, but with the muscles of his upper body nicely defined, not exaggerated. Maybe a swimmer? She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. Shit, he must have been restrained and struggled: there were abrasions on his wrists and upper arms. "You have a puncture mark on your right arm, at your antecubital vein." She palpated the site. "And here's another one. They drugged you," she said flatly.

"Yeah, they did, but that's not all that they did. My memory loss isn't drug induced. Believe me. Or don't, I don't care, I just want to sleep." Mulder sounded angry, and frankly, she couldn't blame him.

She tried another tack. "There are drugs that can cause short term memory loss; in the benzodiazepine family, for example, Ativan has been known to ..."

"Scully, I've taken Ativan and Valium before so I know how I react to them. They did something. Maybe surgery. I'm not sure, but I feel more like I've been given a short-acting narcotic, like Fentanyl, possibly combined with a sedative like Versed or even Haldol." He looked calm now and looked at her straight in her eyes.

She paused to weigh her response. "You've taken Ativan, Valium, Fentanyl, and Haldol in the past." What the hell, she thought, let's just get it out there.

He sighed. "Ativan and Valium while I was profiling. I had some trouble sleeping, recurrent nightmares. The Fentanyl was for a kidney stone, they gave it to me in the ER, instead of Demerol, I'm allergic. Oh yeah, the Haldol. It's a long story. Back when I was with the Violent Crimes Section, I was in Vegas on a case and was exposed to an unknown toxin. I had a bad reaction, a full blown psychotic break. I was hospitalized for a week, and it took nearly a month to be reinstated, even longer to get my gun back. I'll tell you the whole sad story sometime, but right now I think we need to get as far away from western Idaho as we can." He closed his eyes again. "Scully. Can you do me a favor? Just toss my stuff in my bag."

The drugs must be starting to wear off. Petulant Mulder was gone, Bossy Mulder was back. But she just nodded, and looked for the bag.

He smiled faintly. "What shall we do about that car that you stole?"

"Nothing. I doubt they will be coming after me to prosecute. We'll leave it here. The military must have taken the keys for the rental from you while you were in custody, because it's back here in the parking lot." His stuff was scattered all over the room. Of course.

"God, that's a relief. The loss of a second rental would be tough to justify on the expense report." Now his eyes were half-open, gazing at her, as she moved around the room opening drawers, checking to make sure nothing was left behind.

She shuddered at the memory of the back windshield of the first sedan shattering. At least this one would be returned intact. "Yes," she said aloud, with a small smile in return.

"Scully, what are you going to write in your report to Blevins? Are you going to blow the whistle on me, G-Woman?" he said quietly.

She took a deep breath. What she said next and how she said it could determine the future direction of her assignment, and of both their careers. She needed him to trust her. She wanted to trust him. They would never form a viable partnership without that trust.

"No, Mulder, I'm not. But I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me why you took such an awful risk. Sneaking onto a top secret military base. You're lucky they only did a mind wipe." He opened his eyes at that statement, but his face remained impassive.

"Mulder," she went on. "They could have imprisoned you or even just shot you. What did you hope to learn? I need to know." She finished his packing, closed the suitcase, and walked around to the other side of the bed and, only hesitating for a second, climbed onto his bed, and turned to hear his reply. She couldn't say the rest, the little speech about trust and true partnership. It sounded too sappy, even to her ears.

Silence. Then, "I believe that my sister was abducted. I believe that our government is hiding proof of the existence of extraterrestrials on earth, and that finding that proof will lead me to the truth about what happened to my sister. If you want, I will give you access to my medical records, and I'll give you the tapes."

"The tapes." Scully was puzzled. Tapes of what?

"Yeah, the regression hypnosis sessions. Dr. Heinrich made copies for me of his tapes of the sessions. You can listen, judge for yourself if I'm really as crazy as you think."

"I don't think you're crazy," she protested. Mulder just looked at her. The hurt behind those eyes took her breath away. "Okay, I'll listen to them. I want to understand."

2.

Dana could remember the exact moment she first looked at death. The rabbit she had so loved, and carefully hidden away from her siblings (it's mine, she'd reasoned, it belongs to me) was her first pet, her first lost love, and her first victim. Suffocated due to the careless ignorance of its young owner, her "Funny Bunny" lay still in the tin lunch box, its limp, matted form covered with the white, crawling insects young Dana had thought to be worms. Dr. Scully, the trained forensic pathologist, knew they were maggots. The image was to haunt her dreams for the rest of her life, resurfacing in times of stress and fear. Since she and Mulder had returned from Idaho, she had had the dream three times. She needed to understand why.

Dana had learned from her father that the best way to master fear, to control any emotional state, was to understand it. She had heard her father say many times, "You will be able to do this, Starbuck. We just need to find out why you're afraid to try."

When she was five, he had sat with her as she tried to reason out what was scary about sleeping in the dark: "I can't see the bad things, Daddy." A night-light had solved that problem. He had listened to her worries about making friends in a new school, her fear of failing her art elective in Junior High: "Daddy, I can't draw or paint and clay feels gross, it's squishy!" He soothed even her worries about boys and dating: "Starbuck. There is nothing for you to worry about. You are a lovely, intelligent young girl, and you will be a beautiful, accomplished young woman. When the time is right, there will be no shortage of young men to pay attention to you. Melissa is a very pretty girl, but so are you. Stop comparing yourself to your sister." Somehow, when he said it, she believed.

So, she studied death, she looked it in the eye, and she stared back. Her tools were her mind, her scientific training, and her scalpel. She thought of forensic pathology not just as a tool, but as a weapon, which she wielded to battle ignorance, to gain knowledge about how living things worked, and for justice. It was her ignorance, after all, that had caused her rabbit's death.

Her first deliberate killing was the senseless shooting of a harmless garter snake. Deliberate in a sense, she qualified, since she had wanted to kill the snake, despite shedding tears over its death. Later, when her curiosity had won out over her grief and fear, she had walked back to the snake, to its shallow resting place of dirt and leaves, to poke at its scaly body with a stick. She resolved, then and there, never to kill again, a vow she promptly broke when she killed a spider that had crawled up onto her foot.

But the dead continued to call her. She had quietly enjoyed dissecting her first frog in eighth grade science class, rationalizing its death as necessary to the pursuit of knowledge. With uncanny ease, she expertly pithed the frog on the dissection board, severing its spinal column, just as her teacher had demonstrated.

This dissection was not technically her first, but it was the first officially sanctioned. She had casually conducted other post mortem examinations, the most notorious being a dead sparrow. She had laid the bird on a piece of plywood and had already opened up its tiny breast, when her mother, who had come out to take the sheets off the clothesline, had spotted her, and made her stop. "Dana Katherine Scully, what on earth are you doing?"

"I didn't kill the bird, Lancelot did," she explained to her mother. The bird was a love-offering, deposited on their doorstep by their tomcat. She had just cut it open so that she could see how it was made, using a small paring knife, which her mother had thought she'd misplaced.

She was ten years old. That night, she had sat at the dining table, her father at his place at the head of the table, her mother by his side. "Dana. I hope you understand how serious this is." She did. For her father to call her by her given name made it a serious matter. Her parents made her promise not to dissect any more dead birds, dead insects, dead lizards, or any other dead creatures, without adult permission.

Dana kept her word. After the frog in eighth grade, she got to dissect a cat in tenth grade biology, and another one in twelth grade Advanced Placement biology, as well as a frog, and a lab rat, who had died of old age. Her teacher, Mr. Eberle, was an idealistic young man, with dark brown hair and round wire-rimmed glasses, who recognized talent when he saw it. He allowed her to stay after school, to make slide preparations and look at them under the microscope. With her grades and her test scores, he thought she should major in biology, then get a doctoral degree. The eighties were a heady time to be a bright young woman.

"You can do whatever you want to do, Dana," she recalled him saying, and she had believed him. So while her decision to major in physics was a surprise to her parents, her interest in science was not. Dana loved a challenge and physics was hard. Not the math, that was easy, but the concepts were mind-boggling. Her senior thesis, concerning Einstein's Twin paradox, was her last intellectual foray into the theoretical. Dana had been accepted into medical school, and though she had told no one of her decision, she already knew she was going to become a pathologist. She would study the dead and learn their secrets.

3.

The plane ride back from Idaho was uneventful. Mulder slept most of the way, only waking when she roused him to check his pupils and level of consciousness. After they landed back in DC, Scully turned to him. "I want you to go to the ER to be checked out, just to be on the safe side. Your memory loss concerns me. I want you to be seen. "

He looked at her. "They aren't going to find anything wrong with me." He said this quietly, but with a look in his eyes that Scully was starting to recognize. _Damn. How am I going to convince him?_ She tried to sound both concerned and authoritative.

"You might have a concussion, Mulder. Short term memory loss is indicative..."

"Scully, I'm not going. I hate emergency rooms. Just...no. I'm tired, and I need to sleep. I'm going home." He picked his bag and briefcase up and looked around for hers. She had already taken it down from the overhead compartment and had it and her other belongings in hand. She stepped back into the aisle to give him a chance to stand and put his coat on. She glanced up at him as they shuffled through the aisle to the tunnel leading back into the airport.

He did look tired. Other than on the plane, when had he last slept? When had she? She walked quickly to keep up with his long strides as they walked toward the exit. She made a quick decision.

"Then, I'm going back to your apartment with you. We don't know what was done to you. To be on the safe side, I need to keep you under observation for at least another 24 hours."

He studied her, and then sighed. "I don't have a guest room." As the crowd thinned, Mulder's pace picked up. He stopped abruptly in front of one of the magazine stands, and looked over the snacks on the shelves in front of the register, while she waited for him. Apparently, they didn't have what he wanted.

"That's fine. I can sleep on your sofa," Scully said resolutely, when he came out.

"I don't have a bed, I sleep on my couch. You are welcome to join me there, of course," he added with a small smile.

_First he doesn't have a guest room, now he doesn't have a bed. Next he'll be telling me he's been married and his ex got the bedroom set in the divorce settlement._

"That sounds a bit -- crowded," she said with as straight a face as she could manage. "You had better stay with me, then."

"I really don't want to put you out like this," he objected. "Don't you have plans for this weekend?"

"Yes, I have plans. I plan to make sure that you weren't harmed by whatever was done to you at that base. I have a guest room. You will sleep there so that I can watch you. Or, I can drive you to the ER at Memorial and you can tell your story to the triage nurse." Scully was not giving any ground. She could be stubborn, too, dammit. Plus, she was right.

"My car's in Lot A," she said, foot tapping impatiently. "Where's yours?"

"I took a cab." He sighed again. "You know this really isn't necessary, Scully."

"Great," she said brightly. "We won't have to worry about your car on Monday morning. Let's go."

Suddenly she stopped. "Mulder." She looked at him hesitantly. "Do you have plans for this weekend?" She felt a little shy about asking, but he'd asked her, hadn't he?

"No, nothing firm. It doesn't matter." He looked straight at her. "I appreciate the concern. I do, really. I'll sleep better at my place is all. I fall asleep on the sofa watching television. I have for several years. I don't want to disturb you."

"Fortunately for you, I have a small set in my guest room." She smiled. Her feet were starting to hurt, but they were nearly at the shuttle stop. She wished she'd worn flats but she already felt so short around him. "Mulder, there's the shuttle. If we hurry we won't have to wait for the next one." She walked briskly over to the curb, and lifted her carry-on up into the vehicle.

"With cable and a remote?" he said skeptically, following her up the steps and sitting across the aisle from her on the hard bench seat. She watched him try to squeeze himself into a smaller space as the vehicle began to fill up with other travelers.

"Yes. Mulder, cable television with a remote control. It's a small set but the picture is fine." _I'm going to win this round. He's going to give in. Okay. This won't be any worse than having him in the next room at the motel._

"Okay," he agreed. "_The Creature From the Black Lagoon_ is on the SciFi Channel. It's classic movie night."

"Do you have the entire schedule for the SciFi channel memorized?" She didn't really want to know the answer to that, did she?

"Not the entire schedule, just for the week that is in this week's TV Guide. You wouldn't want me to miss anything important just because we were out of town and didn't have a schedule with us, would you, Scully?" His eyes were laughing and a tiny smile was forming at the corner of his mouth. His mouth was so lovely. Objectively speaking, of course.

The weekend was uneventful. She set her alarm to go off every two hours to check on him. The first time he was awake, and had jokingly invited her to stay and watch the end of an old black and white movie from the thirties, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, _To Have and Have Not_. She had already seen it, she told him. The next few checks she found him sleeping so peacefully that she hated to wake him, to shine the penlight in his eyes and do the neuro-checks. He fell back to sleep each time, though, and didn't stir when she turned off the TV and shut off the light.

She drove Mulder home Sunday morning. "I'm out of boxers. Unless you want me to go commando at the office Monday." He said this lying on the bed in her guest room, his long arms folded underneath his head while she shone her light into his eyes one last time. He seemed fine, if a bit more tired and subdued than his usual hyperactive self.

She had only been alone for a few hours, when she heard the knock on her door. She walked over, checked the peephole, and then opened the door. "Mulder. What are you doing here? I thought you had to do laundry?"

He was silent for a moment. "I brought you the tapes." He still looked tired, with the strain of the past few days evident in the small shadows under his eyes and the stubble he hadn't yet bothered to shave.

She was momentarily puzzled, but then remembered. The regression hypnosis sessions. Great. "Oh. Yes. Thank you, Mulder." She hesitated, then asked, "Do you want to come in? I can make you some coffee."

"No. You're right. I do need to get back to my laundry. I'll, uh, see you in the morning, Scully." He gave her a quick but intense look as he handed her the manila envelope containing the tapes. He paused for a moment as though he was going to add something, but changed his mind.

"Yes. In the morning." She closed the door and stood for a moment, listening to his footsteps on the walkway, then turned around and leaned against the door, with her eyes closed. She was relieved to see him go. She needed some time alone.

Entertaining Mulder wasn't as time-consuming as baby-sitting her god-son, but it wasn't easy, either. Mulder liked his tea iced, not hot, from a can, rather than fresh brewed. He liked his pizza with everything but the kitchen sink, but the only acceptable salad consisted of iceberg lettuce and bottled Wishbone Italian. Well, at least he remembered to put down the toilet seat lid. Someone had trained him.

Despite getting up every few hours to check on Mulder, she had slept well the two nights he had spent at her apartment. The night after he went back to his apartment, she wandered through her rooms, straightening up. With everything back in order, she felt relaxed enough to try to sleep. She got out one of the back issues of Nature she kept meaning to finish, and read about dark matter in the universe until she felt her eyes starting to close. She rolled over and turned off the lamp.

"Where is that rabbit? I'm going to turn it into rabbit stew!" Bill's face was distorted and sneering.

She screamed, "Bill. Bill! You're never going to find him! Bill!"

Suddenly, instead of her brother, she was yelling at the motel clerk about the phone lines. She was driving down the road to the base to look for Mulder, alone, in the car with the broken back window. There was glass everywhere, in her hair, on the seat. She had cut herself getting in, it seemed, because she could see the blood dripping from her hands, down the steering wheel. It felt warm and wet, as it pooled on her lap, and soaked her jeans.

Then she was at the base. An older man with graying black hair, wearing a dark suit, informed her, "We have Mulder tied up in the basement. You will have to go down to get him. What happened to your hands, Agent Scully?" Looking down at her bloodied hands, she could see they were now covered in maggots. She woke up, shaking.

What the hell was that about? Shit. She got up and pulled off her pajama bottoms and her blood-soaked underpants, and threw them into the bathroom sink to soak. Well, at least it didn't happen while Mulder was still here, she thought as she turned on the shower and adjusted the spray. She stood underneath, just letting the hot water washing over her, washing off the tension and yes, the fear. She had been afraid, not only of what they had done to him, but also, what if she hadn't gotten him back? What then? They had only been partnered for a few weeks and he was already making a starring appearance in her dreams, and not even the good kind. This would not do. This had to stop. She picked up the shampoo and started lathering her scalp. She started giggling.

"I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair, I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair, and send him on his way..." she warbled in her slightly off-key soprano. She didn't care what anyone thought, she loved Rodgers and Hammerstein. Daniel had liked teasing her about her devotion to _The Sound of Music_. Daniel. Oh.

The last time she had dreamed about her dead rabbit, she was still with Daniel.

The dreams started when she was near the end of her residency. She met Daniel Waterston while she was still in medical school. He had given a guest lecture on cardiac disease during her second year. He was a brilliant lecturer. Dana wrote as fast as she could during the class, taking copious notes in her then-precise handwriting, taking them home and transcribing them. This writing and re-writing of material always seemed odd to other people, but she learned things by doing. Somehow, by writing the words, her hands helped the information flow to her brain.

She didn't meet him again until the end of her fourth year. This time, the context was entirely different. She was with a patient in the MICU, whose attending physician had requested a cardiology consult due to some changes in the ECG and an elevated troponin level. Daniel came into the room, trailing an entourage of medical students and residents. He started questioning the students, a bit impatiently, Dana remembered thinking. Their answers proving unsatisfactory to him, he next turned to her. She, unlike the third year students, had already heard the expanded version of the mini-lecture he was preparing to deliver, so she gave it for him. She still remembered the surprised look on his face when she quoted from her lecture notes from the previous year.

After the rest of his group had left to go reread the chart for the clues they had missed, he lingered in the room.

"I hadn't realized that I had made such an impression on any of my students, Miss Scully. You seem to have a fine grasp on the basics of cardiology. Are you considering it as a specialty?" he had said with a smile, but with a look in his eyes so intense that she could still feel its effect on her.

"I am going to do a residency in pathology, here, starting in July," she had heard herself saying. Then she had agreed to meet him for coffee. They talked about medicine, mostly. He was surprised at her choice of pathology but initially had made no objection. He asked her to meet in his office the next day so that he could give her some article he thought she should read. They connected on an intellectual level, discussing the articles he copied for her, interesting cases he was consulting on. He was pursuing her, she realized, through her intellect. No man had ever been so interested in her mind to the exclusion of her body. She knew that she was pretty, though not in any extraordinary way. But not sexy. They saw each other several times a week, although once she started her residency, her time became more limited. She knew she was falling in love with him. She thought he was falling in love with her, as well. She was not in any hurry to take things to the next level. As it turned out, there were some obstacles in their way. Big ones.

Daniel was a man who was used to being in charge. In subtle ways, he kept trying to influence and control her. He was so like her father in that respect. In particular, he disapproved of her choice of pathology, not understanding how important the work was to her, how much she loved it. "You are wasting your talent as a clinician, Dana. I don't understand what the appeal is." He hated the idea of her joining the FBI as much as he disliked pathology. He had that in common with her father, too. It was hard for her not to allow his distaste for her work to affect her, but she was used to people's disapproval. No one thought pathology was an appropriate choice. Well, that was just too damn bad.

Toward the end of her residency, she was sure that Daniel Waterston was the man she would marry. She was a serious person, and knew that casual sex would not fulfill her, feeling content to wait for the right person at the right time. She planned her first time with him just as carefully as she did everything else. She had invited him over for dinner, which was unusual. Although tired from standing in an autopsy bay for most of the afternoon, she rushed home to shower, and get preparations underway. She bought his favorite red wine, his favorite steaks. She applied the scent he had bought for her, "Joy." Once she had mentioned in passing that it was her favorite perfume. The next time she saw him, he had bought some for her, for no reason at all. She put fresh sheets on her bed, and a towel between them and the mattress pad. Although a childhood spent riding bikes, and her visual inspection, nearly guaranteed a pain-free first time, she felt it was better to be safe. She was already on birth control pills. She loved him, she wanted him and she didn't want to wait any longer.

As it turned out, all her preparations were for naught. Instead of making love with him in her bed, she sat across from him on her sofa, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, numbly listening as Daniel explained about his wife and daughter. The wife he was still living with, and their 16-year-old daughter. She had known he had been married, and had grown children; however, he had always talked about his marriage in the past tense. When she found out the truth, she was aghast. There was no question about what she had to do. "I'm moving to Washington DC. I am transferring to Georgetown, and will complete my residency there in forensics. I've decided to take the offer from the FBI."

Not that Daniel made this easy. "I know it was wrong of me to deceive you, Dana. Please, give me a chance to make this right." So, she had. After she tearfully agreed to try to work things out, Daniel went home, ostensibly to break with his wife, tell his family about her and move out.

"I want us to be together, Dana. I'm in love with you, and I believe you are in love with me, too." He said these words to her afterward, getting ready to head back home to his wife and daughter.

That night, she dreamed about walking into the basement, slowly down the steps, one by one, the feeling of dread growing more intense with each step that she took. She didn't need to open up the lunch box. She woke up shivering and alone.

The result was chaos. Daniel never formally separated from his wife; instead, he alternated between staying at a hotel, and sleeping in the residents' room at the hospital. When his youngest daughter Maggie starting cutting classes, he moved back home with his family. Since he still hadn't told his wife about their relationship, Dana thought it was for the best. In June, she sublet her old apartment, and moved in with her parents in Baltimore, until she started at the academy. Once she was home again, the dreams finally stopped.

"The dreams are a warning, Dana," her sister had insisted. She had only half-listened to Missy's earnest interpretation of the rabbit, the staircase, the basement, and the other creepy details.

Leaving Daniel was one of the hardest things she had ever done. She had known him for nearly seven years. It seemed like they were always waiting for just the right moment to be together: after she graduated, after her residency, after he had left his wife. There, she admitted it. She had known all along that something, if not someone, was holding him back.

"You had no choice, Dana. You know he isn't right for you." What Missy said was true, but still, it was hard. She never spoke with him again. She still wondered sometimes if she had made the right choice.

She dried herself off, and finger combed her hair. Time to get moving and get ready for work. She pushed her thoughts about Daniel and her latest dream to the back of her mind. Tom Colton had called last night to set up a lunch meeting. She didn't flatter herself to think it was anything other than work-related. She and Tom had no chemistry, and anyway she had been with Jack Willis, their firearms instructor at Quantico, during most of the time she had known Tom. For all he knew, they were still together. She sighed. What was it with her and authority figures, anyway? Well, she wasn't going to make that mistake again. Yes, Mulder was technically the senior agent, but...she reported to Blevins. So did Mulder. So in her eyes that made them equals. Sort of. She certainly wasn't attracted to Blevins. Or Mulder.

Having finished with her morning routine, she stepped over to her closet. The teal blue suit was clean, she noted. She pulled it out, picked out a white blouse, took them over to the bed, sat down and started pulling on her pantyhose. Mulder, she thought as she pulled the stockings over her hips, and then twisted them into place. Her latest challenge, her new mystery to solve. She felt she understood why she had been assigned to the X-files division. Applying the principles of scientific investigation to Fox Mulder's case files was a task she felt uniquely qualified for; her diverse background in both the biological and physical sciences, plus her training as a forensic pathologist, gave her the tools. Science would make it possible to understand and explain even his most "extreme possibilities," of that she was sure. What she was less certain about was her ability to understand her brilliant, erratic partner.

She walked back into the bathroom to finish her makeup and hair. While applying her mascara, she stopped and studied her reflection. Maybe Missy was right, that the dream was a sort of warning. She wasn't sure she believed in dream interpretation, but she had to acknowledge the dream recurred during periods of transition or stress. Being assigned to the X-files certainly fit that description.

As she packed up her briefcase, she glanced over at the stack of tapes. She would listen to them. Soon, she told herself. _After all, he has already told me the story. I know what he believes happened. The tapes don't prove anything._ She picked up her briefcase, and left for the day.

4.

"All right," Blevins said, looking at her from across his desk. He sounded impatient. He had not been happy with the conclusions she had drawn from the data collected on the Tooms case, she knew that. She had supported Mulder. She was not supposed to be doing that, apparently, even if the science did.

"You've talked to him about the 302. What is your opinion now? Should I disallow it or not? "

"No, I think you should go ahead and approve it," she heard herself say. "Mulder does have more evidence. There have been numerous UFO sightings in the area since the 1960's, with newspaper accounts, eye witnesses. One reported eye witness of a sighting in 1967, Darlene Morris, is the mother of the missing girl."

"So, Agent Mulder thinks there is a connection," Blevins replied, tapping his fingers on the case file in front of him. "What do you think, Agent Scully? Is there any evidence to support that conclusion? Or, is this just one of Mulder's attempts to use Bureau resources to advance his own agenda?"

Scully thought quickly. "Investigation into the unexplained is the purpose of the X-files division, is it not? Surely this case shouldn't be shunted aside because of Mulder's past..."

Blevins didn't let her finish, which was just as well. She had run out of excuses. "I'll approve it, but only because I'm convinced that he'll go to Iowa whether I approve the 302 or not. You've read his file. You know how heedless he is of authority and of his own personal safety when pursuing a case like this," Blevins said seriously.

"A child abduction, you mean." She started to feel a little sick. Shit.

"I can't approve any more than the two of you and travel expenses based on the flimsy evidence here," as he threw the folder back toward her. "Go then, but you'll be the one who has to keep him in check."

* * * *

She opened the door to Mulder's office. He was sitting at his desk, his head bent over some paperwork, his coat slung carelessly, over the back of his chair. As she approached, he turned to look at her, and then went back to his work.

"Scully. Hey. You all ready to head out in the morning," he said casually, as though he didn't really expect an answer.

"I just came from Blevins' office, to bring you the 302 that he just approved for us." She thought he should know that she knew it hadn't been approved before this. Besides, she wanted to know the answer to the unspoken question. What would he have done if it hadn't been approved? Would he have just dragged her out to Iowa regardless, or worse yet, left her behind?

She placed the paperwork on his desk, pulled a chair up, sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and waited. He stared back at her, a range of emotions barely registering.

"What do you want from me, Scully?" he said finally, breaking off his gaze, to push his chair back and rub his hand through his hair.

"I want to know the truth. What were you going to do if Blevins hadn't approved it? He seemed to think that you were headed to Iowa either way." This was hard, she thought suddenly, but necessary. She needed the facts. Having already confirmed that Mulder's reputation as a brilliant, if unorthodox, investigator was justified, she needed to know if his reputation for being insubordinate was as well.

He got up, walked over to one of his file cabinets, and pulled out a handful of old case files. Some were dog-eared and stained, others looked nearly new. Still holding the files, he turned back to her. He seemed calm, but only on the surface. Something was bothering him, and she hoped he would be forthcoming.

"Before you were assigned to me, yes, I would have gone. Without a doubt, I would have gone, and put in for reimbursement, after I had completed the case. Usually if I solved it, I wouldn't get called on the carpet. Now it's more complicated." He walked back, sat down and put the stack of files on the desk, near her chair.

"Because of me. Because I was assigned to the X-Files," she replied, looking over at the folders.

"Scully, I know why you are here. You're here to debunk my work, to get me shut down. But I won't allow that to interfere with my work. I can't. I won't," he repeated slowly. "I have to go to Iowa, because if I don't, who will?" He picked up the top folder, glanced at it, and handed it to her. "This is case number MP 301-209, Missing Person, Child, Associated Unexplained Phenomena. It is just one case. There are hundreds like it in the X-Files. I know what it's like, Scully. I know." He had closed his eyes briefly, but then seemed to shake off whatever emotion had started to emerge.

She sat silently, as he talked, thinking about his accusations, because that is what they amounted to. This was the implicit agreement, when she accepted the assignment. She would get to work alongside brilliant, unorthodox Spooky Mulder. In return, she was required to write up detailed reports for Blevins, reports that she knew would be scrutinized at the highest levels.

"I don't know what to say. I am here, just like you, to solve these cases." She stood up, and put the file back on the stack. "I had better get going if I am going to get ready for our flight out tomorrow." He was not the only one with something at stake here. She hoped he realized that.

She dreamed again that night about the basement but this time the steps led her down to Mulder. Seated at his desk, he turned around, looked up at her, and smiled at her warmly. "I know why you are here, Dana. I know what you're afraid of, shall I tell you?" She woke up with a familiar ache between her legs and the blood from her menses drying on her fingers. She got up, washed her hands, and glanced at the clock on her dresser. Five a.m. She needed to get ready. Their flight out was scheduled at nine.

5.

From their first interview with Darlene Morris, she felt the investigation spinning out of her control. Mulder, clearly convinced by the woman's account of the night of her daughter's disappearance, had already concluded that Ruby had indeed "been taken," just as his sister had been so many years ago. She began to fear that maybe Blevins was right: maybe Mulder wasn't, couldn't be objective when it came to these cases.

Initially, she tried to convince him of the lack of evidence to support his conclusion. Mulder just kept running down the leads, over her objections and the outright hostility of the local law enforcement. Jesus, the man was ready to take on the NSA.

"Until someone tells me otherwise, I'm not accountable to anyone, outside of my subcommittee. I don't care if it's the NSA or the Vatican police," he had proclaimed with the casual arrogance of long practice. She had overheard the exchange outside in the hallway. She was getting ready to enter, only to glance in, and find him still bare to the waist. Who the hell did he think he was, she thought irritably.

"You shouldn't have told them." His gaze was the cold stare of the righteous. "They had no jurisdiction," he went on as he finished dressing.

Well, two could play at that game. "Mulder, they're NSA. They think the boy may be a threat to national security." she retorted, indignantly.

As they walked to the car, to follow the NSA agents to the Morris home, he turned again, his gaze controlled but angry. "You are going to have to decide what matters most to you: those little reports you keep writing for Blevins, or finding out the truth about what happened to that girl."

What she was just starting to come to terms with was that Mulder really didn't care what other people thought. He was as confident of his abilities as an investigator, as he was certain of his beliefs. The pattern held true in every investigation they had been involved in since she was assigned to him. It was true in Bellefleur, it was true here, and in Baltimore investigating the Tooms case. In Idaho, it could have cost him more than a few brain cells. It could have meant his job, or even his life.

She didn't bother to reply to his challenge. She knew that as a scientist, nothing mattered more to her than the truth. The problem was that she didn't, she couldn't just function as a scientist in her role as an FBI agent. As Mulder's partner, she had other duties to perform, and a chain of command to answer to, and whether he liked it or not, so did Mulder.

At the FBI Regional Office, she was contrite in her apology to Darlene Morris. It had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding. How could she have known that the NSA agents would tear apart the woman's home, tear her child out of her arms? Thinking back to how they had treated her and Mulder back on that highway in Idaho, she guessed she should have known. She wished it could have turned out differently. The woman was now refusing to cooperate with their investigation. Walking out with him to the car, she was afraid to even look at Mulder. He automatically opened the door for her. His manners were so ingrained, sometimes she felt like they were on a bad date.

What was he doing down in the basement anyway? He certainly wasn't being hidden away, and he wasn't the FBI's most unwanted, either. He had the contacts and the connections to keep pursuing his unconventional cases, despite the objections of his superiors. Even so, she felt certain that an agent of less extraordinary talent would have been kicked out by now. The FBI brass didn't want to lose him, they wanted to keep using him, as a profiler and as an investigator. To keep him at the Bureau, they gave him the X-files. Then, they gave her to him. She was the one who was supposed to follow protocol and keep her partner in line. Right. Her and what army.

He just saw her as one more obstacle in his path, not as an asset, or an ally. She would have to prove herself over and over, in order to earn his respect, and maybe, eventually his trust. She looked up from her reverie to see trees and fields through her car window.

"I thought we were headed back into town." She looked over at him and saw the little negative shake of his head. "Where are we going?" Her voice sounded shrill to her ears. Calm down. This isn't helping.

"The boy's the key, Scully. I know it." Mulder said confidently.

"The key to what?" Here we go.

"Finding Ruby. Just think about it, this is a boy who is receiving all kinds of digitalized data from a television screen."

Scully objected, "Agent Atsumi said it was a statistical aberration." Mulder shook his head. She had been around him enough to know that a bizarre theory was next. She listened, made the appropriate counter-arguments, and then tried again.

"Mulder. I know what you are thinking. I know why this is so important to you." _I have to make him see reason on this. Surely he can see that he is being irrational._ Then he turned to look at her. Seeing his sadness and vulnerability made her want to reach out to him. She shook the feeling off. "But there is no evidence indicating an abduction." She tried to sound sympathetic but firm, but what she was starting to feel was panic. And fear. She had to stop this because if she let that fear control her she wouldn't be able to think, and someone needed to keep a clear head.

Mulder just nodded. "That's why we're going to Lake Okobogee." She was silent for the rest of the drive. She thought back, to watching him in the Morris's living room. He had touched the photo of little Ruby with such tenderness. She closed her eyes again. How could she make this work if she couldn't even make the slightest headway in her arguments with him? What was she doing here?

The lake itself was lovely, the water a clear green-blue, ringed with a fringe of evergreen trees, and a small sandy beach. Scully stood back, watching Mulder wander toward the water's edge, happy that at least she was wearing slacks and flats, although jeans and sneakers would have been an even better choice, had she but known. The air was cool for the time of year, and she was glad for her jacket.

She was formulating her response to Mulder's latest theory about a close encounter, when she spotted the small white wolf at the edge of the forest. He ran quickly ahead, and as she caught up to him, she heard the shot. She saw the pile of stones, looked at his face. Oh no, Mulder, no, please. The foul smell emanating from the shallow grave did nothing to deter him from attempting to uncover the body within.

"I need to know." No matter what he said, she knew he feared the truth he was attempting quite literally to uncover. She also knew that there was no way that body could be Samantha's. But that wasn't true for Mulder. He saw her everywhere.

After Tessa confessed to the murder of that body, a man named Greg Randall, Scully had had enough, enough of Iowa, and enough of chasing after Mulder.

"It's time to go home, Mulder, and turn this over to local law enforcement," she argued.

"I can't do that." he retorted angrily, and then turned and walked away. Oh no, no, no. Not again.

"Where are you going?" she demanded. Mulder just kept walking away from her.

"To talk to the boy," Mulder stated firmly, and continued to walk.

"They don't want to have anything to do with us," she protested. And that's my fault, she thought, though she couldn't say that aloud. She knew that it was futile to try to stop him, now that he had completely shut her out. She was certain he was going to leave her behind again. Or was it that she couldn't, or wouldn't let herself follow? She had to try again.

"Mulder, stop!" She pleaded. "Stop running after your sister. It won't bring her back." He turned around then and looked at her. Though his face was calm, his eyes were cold and angry. This was not good.

"Come with me, or don't come with me. But until I find a body, I'm not giving up on that girl." Then he turned and walked away. Scully hesitated and then followed behind him.

_What else can I do? He is my partner. He isn't going to listen. He isn't going to stop. At least this time, I can try to keep him safe._ She quickened her pace as she struggled to catch up. _He is too goddamn fucking tall._

Mulder was right, she had to admit it. Ruby was alive. They found her back at Lake Okobogee, in the woods not far from the camp site from where she'd been abducted. Allegedly abducted, Scully corrected. Those lab values were odd, though. What on earth could possibly have caused a concurrent reduction in the leukocyte count and the release of corticosteroids, she mused. She knew what Mulder thought but she was going to have to come up with something that made some sense for her report to Blevins. She cheered up. She would just have to do some research when they got back to Washington.

The ride back from the hospital to their motel was a quiet one. Without Darlene Morris's permission to interview Ruby, their investigation was concluded. After she had finished her packing, she walked up to Mulder's motel room door and knocked. When he didn't answer, she used her key. His suitcase was open, his belongings were still scattered but his bed looked like it had never been slept in. She walked to the office to see if he had left her a message.

"Oh, yes, Agent Scully, the tall handsome gentleman? He said he was going to walk a bit, get some fresh air." The desk clerk went back to her _Entertainment Weekly_.

"Thanks." she said. Of course, Mr. Tall and Handsome had left his cell phone in his room, so he couldn't be reached. She could wait around for him to reappear, she could go look for him, or she could mind her own business, relax and go to mass. Maybe there was a Catholic Church nearby. She didn't really attend often anymore, but it might be nice to go and hear the music. She quickly checked the directory. Yes. Two blocks down, one block over.

She was disappointed to see that the last service was over. The church was still open, though, so she decided to go in and just sit quietly. She opened the doors and stepped into the vestibule. It was a large church, of typical mid-sixties architecture, with stained glass and a very high arched ceiling, not unlike the church she had attended in her childhood. She started walking down the center aisle, when suddenly she stopped. There he was in the center of the church, sitting, no, kneeling, with his hands clasped in front of him. He was crying, quietly. It was Mulder. Oh God.

She wasn't sure what to do, but she knew she shouldn't stay. She couldn't let him know, so she turned around and left the church, leaving her partner behind. She remembered suddenly what he had said to her, driving back to the lake. "I'm still walking into that room, every day of my life." Imagine going through life like that, always waiting, always hoping. He had been so certain that they would find Ruby. And, they did. But it wasn't enough, was it, to save one girl? Mulder wanted, no, he needed to save them all.

Lost in her thoughts, she walked quickly back toward the motel, not seeing the car heading toward her as she entered the crosswalk. Horns blared, brakes screamed. She looked up to see a faded blue Dodge Dart, its irate owner scowling at her over the steering wheel.

"Lady, wake the fuck up!" She saw rather than heard him say, as the car skidded to a halt in front of her. _Damn. I had better do that._ Otherwise, she thought ruefully, this was not going to end well, for either one of them. She smiled apologetically and shrugged her shoulders at the driver, who glared back and shook his head. She resumed her walk back to the motel where she would wait for Mulder to return.

* * * *

_It remains Agent Mulder's contention that Ruby Morris was abducted from her bed at Lake Okobogee, was taken aboard an alien spacecraft, for unknown purpose, and later returned. She was found unconscious in the woods near the lake, but was revived while on route to the hospital. The test results that suggest she experienced a period of prolonged weightlessness during her alleged captivity remain unexplained. It is a credit to Agent Mulder's extraordinary investigative talent, and his perseverance in the face of adversity that Ruby was returned to her family alive._

Scully clicked on save-as, and closed her lap top. She stood up and stretched. The report to Blevins was complete, and was properly appreciative of Mulder's ability as an agent, if a bit dismissive of his theory. She hoped that it was enough to satisfy the brass and keep them at bay. This was not going to be an easy assignment. At least, the dreams that had been haunting her since their return from Idaho seemed over.

She sat back down, and picked up the case-file that was sitting next to the computer. She opened the file on the investigation into Samantha Mulder's disappearance and began to read. She knew that this event was the pivotal one of his life; he had told her, right from the very beginning, in the candlelit motel room in Bellefleur, that "nothing else mattered." The event was so large that it threatened to overwhelm all reason, leaving him unbalanced, all quicksilver intelligence, and intuitive intellect, with nothing to keep him grounded. Or possibly, she admitted, sane. She doubted now that she would ever accomplish what the Bureau's higher ups wanted her to do, namely to bring Mulder back into the FBI mainstream. If that was to be her only goal, then she was certain to fail. She sighed and looked at the cassette tapes that had been collecting dust ever since Mulder brought them by.

What exactly was she afraid of? In her last dream, Mulder had turned around and said to her, "I know what you're afraid of, shall I tell you?" She looked at Samantha's picture, at her smiling face and pigtails. Even if she tried to see what Mulder saw, how would that help? She had to maintain her objectivity, especially during this sort of case, because clearly, Mulder couldn't. What was worse, he seemed to feel that she had nothing useful to contribute to their investigations. If she was to do anything of any value here, that would have to change.

She didn't know how she could convince him that she was not a spy. She knew that from his perspective, she must seem rigid, so he certainly wasn't going to make any effort to see things her way. That meant, at least at first, any attempt at reaching an understanding would have to come from her. Maybe that was the key. Maybe, with some extra effort on her part, she could begin to understand Mulder's thinking: his intuitive leaps, his unconventional ideas, and the emotional under-pinning to it all, the loss of his sister. For as long as she was assigned to the X-Files division, she and Mulder would be partnered. She wanted them to become true partners. Hesitantly, she took the first cassette out of its plastic box, and looked at the label: "Fox Mulder. Regression Hypnosis, Session One." She popped in the tape and pushed Play.


End file.
